Spencer put the pendant down on the coffee table and pushed it slowly across until it was in front of Eileen. He said nothing.
"Do you think I wouldn't know?" Eileen asked me contemptuously.
"Do you think the British War Office wouldn't know?" I asked her right back.
"Obviously there must be some mistake," Spencer said mildly.
I swung around and gave him a hard stare. "That's one way of putting it."
"Another way of putting it is that I am a liar," Eileen said icily. "I never knew anyone named Paul Marston, never loved him or he me. He never gave me a reproduction of his regimental badge, he was never missing in action, he never existed. I bought this badge myself in a shop in New York where they specialize in imported British luxuries, things like leather goods, hand-made brogues, regimental and school ties and cricket blazers, knickknacks with coats of arms on them and so on. Would an explanation like that satisfy you, Mr. Marlowe?"
"The last part would. Not the first. No doubt somebody told you it was an Artists Rifles badge and forgot to mention what kind, or didn't know. But you did know Paul Marston and he did serve in that outfit, and he was missing in action in Norway. But it didn't happen in 1940, Mrs. Wade. It happened in 1942 and he was in the Commandos then, and it wasn't at Andalsnes, but on a little island off the coast where the Commando boys pulled a fast raid."
"I see no need to be so hostile about it," Spencer said in an executive sort of voice. He was fooling with the yellow sheets in front of him now. I didn't know whether he was trying to stooge for me or was just sore. He picked up a slab of yellow script and weighed it on his hand.
"You going to buy that stuff by the pound?" I asked him.
He looked startled, then he smiled a small difficult smile.
"Eileen had a pretty rough time in London," he said. "Things get confused in one's memory."
I took a folded paper out of my pocket. "Sure," I said. "Like who you got married to. This is a certified copy of a marriage certificate. The original came from Caxton Hall Registry Office. The date of the marriage is August 1942. The parties named are Paul Edward Marston and Eileen Victoria Sampsell. In a sense Mrs. Wade is right. There was no such person as Paul Edward Marston. It was a fake name because in the army you have to get permission to get married. The man faked an identity. In the army he had another name. I have his whole army history. It's a wonder to me that people never seem to realize that all you have to do is ask."
Spencer was very quiet now. He leaned back and stared. But not at me. He stared at Eileen. She looked back at him with one of those faint half deprecatory, half seductive smiles women are so good at.
"But he was dead,- Howard. Long before I met Roger. What could it possibly matter? Roger knew all about it. I never stopped using my unmarried name. In the circumstances I had to. It was on my passport. Then after he was killed in action-" She stopped and drew a slow breath and let her hand fall slowly and softly to her knee. "All finished, all done for, all lost."
"You're sure Roger knew?" he asked her slowly.
"He knew something," I said. "The name Paul Marston had a meaning for him. I asked him once and he got a funny look in his eyes. But he didn't tell me why."
She ignored that and spoke to Spencer.
"Why, of course Roger knew all about it." Now she was smiling at Spencer patiently as if he was being a little slow on the take. The tricks they have.
"Then why lie about the dates?" Spencer asked dryly. "Why say the man was lost in 1940 when he was lost in 1942? Why wear a badge that he couldn't have given you and make a point of saying that he did give it to you?"
"Perhaps I was lost in a dream," she said softly. "Or a nightmare, more accurately. A lot of my friends were killed in the bombing. When you said goodnight in those days you tried not to make it sound like goodbye. But that's what it often was. And when you said goodbye to a soldier-it was worse. It's always the kind and gentle ones that get killed."
He didn't say anything. I didn't say anything. She looked down at the pendant lying on the table in front of her. She picked it- up and fitted it to the chain around her neck again and leaned back composedly.
"I know I haven't any right to cross-examine you, Eileen," Spencer said slowly. "Let's forget it. Marlowe made a big thing out of the badge and the marriage certificate and so on. Just for a moment I guess he had me wondering."
"Mr. Marlowe," she told him quietly, "makes a big thing out of trifles. But when it comes to a really big thing-like saving a man's life-he is out by the lake watching a silly speedboat."
"And you never saw Paul Marston again," I said.
"How could I when he was dead?"
"You didn't know he was dead. There was no report of his death from the Red Cross. He might have been taken prisoner."
She shuddered suddenly. "In October 1942," she said slowly, "Hitler issued an order that all Commando prisoners were to be turned over to the Gestapo. I think we all- know what that meant. Torture and a nameless death in some Gestapo dungeon." She shuddered again. -Then she blazed at me: "You're a horrible man. You want me to live that over again, to punish me for a trivial lie. Suppose someone you loved had been caught by those people and you knew what had happened, what must have happend to him or her? Is it so strange that I tried to build another kind of memory-even a false one?"
"I need a drink," Spencer said. "I need a drink badly. May I have one?"
She clapped her hands and Candy drifted up from nowhere as he always did. He bowed to Spencer.
"What you like to drink, Sefior Spencer?"
"Straight Scotch, and plenty of it," Spencer said.
Candy went over in the corner and pulled the bar out from the wall. He got a bottle up on it and poured a stiff jolt into a glass. He came back and set it down in front of Spencer. He started to leave again.
"Perhaps, Candy," Eileen said., quietly, "Mr. Marlowe would like a drink too."
He stopped and looked at her, his face dark and stubborn.
"No, thanks," I said. "No drink for me."
Candy made a snorting sound and walked off. There was another silence. Spencer put down half of his drink. He lit a cigarette. He spoke to me without looking at me.
"I'm sure Mrs. Wade or Candy could drive me back to Beverly Hills. Or I can get a cab. I take it you've said your piece.
I refolded the certified copy of the marriage license. I put it back in my pocket.
"Sure that's the way you want it?" I asked him.
"That's the way everybody wants it."
"Cood." I stood up,, "I guess I was a fool to try to play it this way. Being a big time publisher and having the brains to go with it-if it takes any-you might have assumed I didn't come out here just to play the heavy. I didn't revive ancient history or spend my own money to get the facts just to twist them around somebody's neck. I didn't investigate Paul Marston because the- Gestapo murdered him, because Mrs. Wade was wearing the wrong badge, because she got mixed up on her dates, because she married him in one of those quickie wartime marriages. When I started investigating him I didn't know any of those things. All I knew was his name. Now hew do you suppose I knew that?"
"No doubt somebody told you;" Spencer said curtly.
"Correct, Mr. Spencer. Somebody who knew him in New York after the war and later on saw him out here in Chasen's with his wife."
"Marston is a pretty common name," Spencer said, and sipped his whiskey. He turned his head sideways and his right eyelid drooped a fraction of an inch. So I sat down again. "Even Paul Marstons could hardly be unique. There are nineteen Howard Spencers in the Greater New York area telephone directories, for instance. And four of them are just plain Howard Spencer with no middle initial."
"Yeah. How many Paul Marstons would you say had had one side of their faces smashed by a delayed-action mortar shell and showed the scars and marks of the plastic surgery that repaired the damage?"